MP does 12 rounds

LOS ANGELES – Manny Pacquiao gave Freddie Roach a reason to enjoy the weekend following a splendid showing in his sparring session on Saturday.

Pacquiao was not only fast and furious; he was mean and menacing.

Exactly two weeks before he engages Floyd Mayweather in the biggest fight in history, Pacquiao did 12 rounds almost without skipping a beat, something the Filipino fighter said was enough to bring a smile on the face of his Hall of Fame trainer.

“Freddie was very happy,” Pacquiao said after the intense sparring session with two guys at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood.

“What I did in the first two rounds, I maintained in the remainder (of the sparring session),” said Pacquiao, who skipped three straight sparring sessions last week.

Apparently, the reason behind the cancellation of sparring was Pacquiao being way ahead of schedule in training and allowing him to keep on banging bodies would do more harm than good.

It won’t be until April 27 that Pacquiao will start slowing down in training, the day he travels to Las Vegas accompanied by a massive entourage that has grown in number through the years.

But in the coming week, drastic measures will be taken as Roach and his training team apply the brakes to prevent the 36-year-old Pacquiao from leaving all the hard work in the gym.

Mayweather, 38, is the betting favorite in the scheduled 12-rounder set at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.